basicly you never want to run out of elixer. This is a showstopper. always keep elixer high enough to build 2 times an army after defending. lets say your army costs 50k elixer to build. You should always have atleast 100k elixer (after putting army in cue). Even if they steal 30k (30%), youd still have enough to build 1 full army (+1 army in cue).
also always make sure to have atleast 20k gold to search a good village.
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With this style of playing (4 days, +- 90 minits a day) I made a netto profit of:
(with netto I mean after deducting the ammounts used on building armys + things got stolen from me during attacks).
Gold: 10m
Elixer: 6.5m

I looted equal ammounts of gold and elixer,
but gold could always be spend. Elixer did got stolene sometimes.
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this is about 2.5m gold and 1.6m elix per 90 minits.
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This method works best if u have a verry strong defence (high upgraded defences + good setup),
but still weak (gold/pink) walls.

I dont know why, but During a whole day i might get attacked only 2-3 times only. (losing around 200-300k elixer).
But still at the end of the day i end up having 1m+ elixer. (got lvl 5 barbs + max camps this way in a few days).
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Any time I let my trophies go much over 1100 or so I get beat down severely almost the moment I log off for a 3 star loss. I have TH lv 8 and all of my towers built, but probably only upgraded halfway on average.

I find it is still much more lucrative to stay in the 700-900 trophy range and pick off little guys for 20-50k each using only about 50-75 troops on each fight (half goblins, half archers).

I also leave my TH outside the gates to entice little people into giving me a shield for the steal of a price of 1k gold and elixir.

I admit that sandbagging my rating feels a little wrong, but the results of being able to log on and off freely and never care about stockpiled resources getting ninjaed away is pretty awesome.

Sure maybe once a week or less, someone else doing the same thing with their own big base takes a chunk out, but those cases are very rare, as everyone with a big base at this trophy level will not be making their good troops, they will also be making archers and goblins.